Attachments
by Wasim Mir
Introduction
UN peacekeeping missions are facing cash-flow problems and financial strains due to the late payment and withholding of assessed contributions. For UN peacekeeping this is déjà vu. Since the inception of UN peacekeeping, the financing of missions has been a challenge for the secretary-general, with periods of calm followed by periods of crisis. The UN has been particularly vulnerable to withheld and late payments from its biggest financial contributors. Since 2016, the United States has started to withhold a portion of its contribution and build up arrears, which are placing a strain on UN peacekeeping. Withholding contributions has an impact on missions’ effectiveness and the ability of troop-contributing countries to deploy.
Surmounting the financial challenges faced by peacekeeping will require the collective energy and imagination of the UN membership. This paper examines how member-state contributions to peacekeeping are calculated, historical and current financing challenges faced by peacekeeping missions, and ideas for placing UN peacekeeping on a firmer financial footing.
Who Pays for UN Peacekeeping?
Each country’s contribution to UN peacekeeping takes as its starting point the formula used to determine contributions to the UN core (regular) budget, known as the “scale of assessments.” The basis for the regular budget scale is a country’s share of global gross national income (GNI), with adjustments applied for a country’s level of indebtedness and its standing relative to average global income. Payment limits apply for both the least-developed countries and the biggest contributor (see Figure 1).
At the outset of the United Nations, the United States contributed almost 40 percent of the core budget, reflecting its share of the global economy after the Second World War. The UN General Assembly decided early on that the UN should not overly rely on one country and established a ceiling for the share paid by the largest contributor. Over the years, the ceiling for the largest contributor has periodically decreased as UN membership expands and other countries are able to take on a greater share (see Figure 2).
After two decades of dispute, the UN General Assembly settled on an agreed methodology for peacekeeping funding in 1973. This methodology was updated in 2000 and has remained unchanged since. The methodology for the peacekeeping scale of assessments builds on the UN regular budget scale by applying additional adjustments to determine each country’s share of the peacekeeping budget. Countries are divided into ten levels based on their per capita income (see Table 1). Countries with per capita income below twice the world average are placed in levels D to I and receive discounts on a sliding scale based on their relative per capita income. Most countries with income twice the world average contribute at the same rate to peacekeeping as to the regular budget, although a small number of wealthy countries (e.g. Brunei, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates) receive small discounts. The permanent members of the security council form a separate level in recognition of their decision-making responsibilities for peacekeeping and pay an increased share (above their regular budget rate) equivalent to the discounts received by other countries.